Unions, Rights Groups Voice Support For Iran’s Strikes
A group of 15 trade unions and civil rights groups issued a statement on the eve of International Workers' Day to voice support for the ongoing protests and strikes in Iran.
A group of 15 trade unions and civil rights groups issued a statement on the eve of International Workers' Day to voice support for the ongoing protests and strikes in Iran.
The Sunday statement issued on the occasion of May Day underlined that the Islamic Republic "neither deserves to survive nor it is capable of surviving.”
Decrying the “bloody crackdown” by the regime during the current wave of protests ignited by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, the statement said that people from all walks of life including "teachers, workers, filmmakers, artists, and civil and political activists” are against the Islamic Republic.
They noted that the "revolutionary” uprising of the Iranian people is “still alive and moving" forward and no day passes without rallies and acts of protests calling for change.
Referring to the sexual discrimination against women in Iran and the chemical attacks on schoolgirls, they said "Women are deprived of their most basic human rights."
The civil rights groups and labor unions also said the regime "is not able to control rising prices and inflation even for a single week and has plunged a community of 90 million people into poverty and misery in a rich country."
The Council for Organizing Oil Contract-Workers' Protests, which has been one of the main organizers of the current wave of strikes, and workers of the Haft-Tappeh Sugarcane complex – who recently snubbed President Ebrahim Raisi -- were among the signatories of the statement.
The statement came as workers in more than 100 oil, gas, petrochemical and other plants across the country have been staging strikes since April 22, protesting poor working conditions, low wages and rising cost of living. Almost all the striking workers in oil, gas, steel, petrochemicals and other industries, are not officially hired by the country’s oil company or relevant ministries and are working on temporary contracts, risking their only means of livelihood by joining the strikes.
Authorities claim that the strikes are being organized by anti-regime groups, a charge the Islamic Republic often makes to de-legitimize the demands of the workers who earn less than $200 a month. An official at South Pars gas field on the Persian Gulf stated that 4,000 protesting workers will be replaced by new ones.
Earlier in the day, three prominent Iranian labor activists condemned the recent detention of workers calling it "organized brutality" by the regime.
More than 1,600 labor rallies and strikes have been held in the past year across Iran. The Islamic Republic’s security and judiciary apparatus have summoned, arrested and imprisoned dozens of labor activists to stifle dissent.
In their Labor Day statement, the signatories also called for "immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners,” and also cautioned the authorities against “criminalization of political, trade union, and civil actions."
In recent years, as the Iranian National Oil Company has ceded many operations to quasi-private companies, most of the work is done by temporary contract workers with little pay and no benefits.
The so-called private companies are controlled by military or other state entities, or by well-connected regime insiders who quash labor demands by using government security forces.
According to reports, the shipment was unloaded at Aprin dry port -- an inland intermodal terminal near Tehran directly connected by road or rail to a seaport. This shipment includes 1,108 Changan CS35s and 125 Changan CS55s imported by Iranian automaker Saipa.
Mehdi Zeighami, the director of the car import plan at the Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade, said on Sunday that the import was finally carried out “after a five-year hiatus.” He did not say if this is anyhow related to the impeachment of Industry Minister Reza Fatemi-Amin, who appeared at the parliament on the same day to defend his ministry’s performance about the car industry. Even if it was a publicity stunt by the ministry, it did not prove to be effective as Fatemi-Amin could not convince the lawmakers and was sacked anyway.
There are a couple of noteworthy points about the plan to import the cars from the Chinese company. The government plans to import about 100,000 cars from one single Chinese state-owned company, Changan Automobile, by the end of the current Iranian year – March 20, 2024. And the entire project will be done by Saipa, one of the Iranian state-owned companies with a monopoly in manufacturing automobiles. The fact that there is no competition in the import project as no businesses can take part in it makes the whole affair more prone to corruption.
For years critics and politicians have criticized the government-controlled auto industry and have referred to a “mafia” running the money-losing and inefficient sector. In 2019, it was revealed that these carmakers owed $9 billion, a considerable sum in Iran, due to corruption and mismanagement. "Widespread financial corruption has turned automakers in Iran into a powerful Mafia," a lawmaker said at the time.
The carmakers are unable to satisfy domestic demand and they keep raising prices. The government has long restricted car imports, turning the country into a vast parking lot of dilapidated cars.
Changan Automobile is the smallest of the "Big Four" state-owned car manufacturers in China with an annual production capacity of about two million units. It is not clear how the Iranian government came to the conclusion to choose this particular company or if the company would be able to supply the promised 100,000 cars in addition to its other supply commitments.
Another crucial question is how Iran is planning to pay for 100,000 cars when it is under US banking sanctions. The answer can be simple: Use oil import money China owes in a cars for fuel barter deal.
First, making people so eager to get one of the long-sought-after imported cars that they sign up for the plan and pay in advance for a nebulous purchase; second, a murky contract between two state-owned companies from Iran and China without providing any details about the total amount of transactions and number of cars; third, cashing on people’s money as the price of cars can be updated and increased with every shipment of cars. The whole affair can easily be a method by the regime, which faces difficulties to access its oil revenues, to barter oil for cars with China and get the money from the nation.
According to Zeighami, the final price of the imported cars will be announced in the coming weeks. The Central Bank of Iran has blocked at least 96 trillion rials ($2 billion) of prospective customer's money in the cars pre-sales scheme without determining the models of the cars, availability, or the final price since early March. Prospective buyers had to deposit at least five billion rials ($10,000) to book the purchase of an imported car and over 120,000 people signed up for the plan.
Now it is apparent that most of the cars will be Changans, although Zeighami claims that 1,500 other cars will also be imported,which will be from other carmakers such as Fiat, Hyundai, Kia and Mitsubishi.
A lawmaker representing Tehran, Somayeh Rafiei, said in a TV show last week that the axed industry minister told her that the total demand for cars in the country is about two million units.
Iran’s two main carmakers – Saipa and Iran Khodro – can only produce 1,400,000 units of light and heavy vehicles, mostly sub-standard older foreign models.
The chairman of the Association of Car Scrapping Centers said last week that currently 14 to 15 million junk vehicles are on the roads, consuming at least 33 million liters of gasoline (8.7 million gallons) a day.
All things considered, the entire car import scheme and the impeachment of the minister seems like a cunning plot by the government.